Al Gore’s worst nightmare has essentially come true: On Tuesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that rescinds a whole slew of Obama-era environmental protections, on the grounds that the move will grow the U.S. economy. (Never mind for a moment that the order will almost certainly fail to do that.) The order makes the timing of a new trailer for Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, especially meaningful—particularly since Trump is the trailer’s Big Bad.
The Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth debuted in 2006, and its sequel seems to fill in the gaps between then and 2017. There’s some “I told yaso”–ing from Gore, who looks back at An Inconvenient Truth and remembers being criticized for the claim that “sea-level rise and storm surge would flood the 9/11 memorial site.” Of course, footage from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy shows that very same thing happening.
For a moment, the trailer looks like it won’t all be doom and gloom. Gore recounts some of the progress that has been made in the past decade to strengthen environmental protections—including the unprecedented Paris Agreement, which aims to reduce carbon emissions worldwide—and says that while “despair can be paralyzing,” there is reason for optimism. And yet even as the music begins to swell hopefully, there’s a sense of dread that somehow doesn’t dull the impact of what you already knew was coming: Trump.
From there it enters full-blown resistance mode, cutting from natural disaster to natural disaster as Trump promises to slash environmental regulations from the campaign trail, all while Gore delivers fiery speeches of his own and recruits new people to the cause. An Inconvenient Sequel received a standing ovation at this year’s politically charged Sundance Film Festival, with reviewers calling it more personal and emotional than the first. It makes sense: With a tagline like “Fight like your world depends on it,” the stakes really could not be any higher.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power hits theaters July 28.
